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Abstract
The article provides a theoretical rationale for a correctional and developmental programme aimed at enhancing adults’ capacity to interpret their self-image and presents its structural and content-based model. The study proceeds from the assumption that self-image interpretation is a systemic psychological process encompassing awareness of one’s personal characteristics and experiences, their reflective comprehension, integration of life experience into a coherent system of personal meanings, and behavioural implementation of self-representations in social interaction. Based on the analysis of theoretical approaches to self-consciousness, self-concept, reflection, autobiographical memory, narrative identity, and authenticity, four interrelated processes of self-image interpretation are distinguished: self-perception, self-understanding, narrative interpretation of the self, and self-presentation.
Self-perception provides awareness of emotional and evaluative attitudes towards oneself; self-understanding involves reflective analysis and meaning-based organisation of experience; narrative interpretation integrates past, present, and anticipated future into a coherent personal life story; and self-presentation reflects the behavioural expression of internal self-representations in the social environment. The correctional and developmental programme comprises diagnostic-motivational, correctional-developmental, and integrative-reflective stages. Its content is organised into four modules corresponding to the identified processes of self-image interpretation. Reflection, meaning-making, narrativisation, and self-regulation are identified as the principal psychological mechanisms underlying the development of self-image interpretation. The proposed model may be used in psychological counselling, group psychological support, and correctional-developmental work with adults. Further empirical research is required to evaluate the programme’s effectiveness and clarify the contribution of the proposed psychological mechanisms.
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